and smoke through the tree tops and make all the weeds and bushes 

 stoop under their weight of whiteness, and the boughs of the forest droop 

 under their weights of snow as under weights of superabundant fruitage, 

 and the lanes of the woods are dusk at noon when the snows come in 

 silence, but with the dim lights of sunsets and after, and earth seems a 

 memory, so far off it feels, then the woods are bewilderments. They 

 are not kin to what we had known them. We could not recognize these 

 as the woodland ways our fond feet had trodden so often All is new 

 and strange, and we wander as those who have set foot on shores undis- 

 covered till now. When snows dim all the sky and hide far and near in 

 fogbanks of white wonder, then, friend, go into the woods and see them 

 keep tryst with the snows and keep thy lips closed as in inaudible prayer, 

 and walk quietly (for you can do no other when snows carpet the dead 

 leaves), and have a hush of spirit before God as if you walked cathedral 

 solitudes. And when bitter-sweet 



"Hangs its tufts of crimson berries" 



and buckberries wear their surly reds, and the red-oaks hold their leaves 

 and shiver night and day as with perpetual ague ; and when the storms 

 roar and are angry, and the trees rush out with ecstasy of gladness to 

 give battle to the winds; then winter trees are glorious, and I watch them, 

 and fellowship with them, and bless my God I live where winter comes, 

 and where deciduous trees are plentiful, and where simple beauty gives 

 way betimes to massive, yet beautiful might Then commend me to 

 the battle and fury and anthems of the winter trees. 



THROUGH THE PINE WOODS 

 67 



